§1.1 Field of the Invention
The present invention concerns the establishment, use, and/or maintenance of label switched paths, particularly when a protocol used to establish, maintain, and/or tear down such paths, or when a node through which the path passes, is restarting. More specifically, the present invention minimizes the effects of protocol or node control component restart(s) on the flow of data (such as a flow of packets) over the label switched path.
§1.2 Description of Related Art
The description of art in this section is not, and should not be interpreted to be, an admission that such art is prior art to the present invention. Although one skilled in the art will be familiar with networking, circuit switching, packet switching, label switched paths, and protocols such as BGP, RSVP, MPLS, and LDP, each is briefly introduced below for the convenience of the less experienced reader. More specifically, circuit switched and packet switched networks are introduced in §1.2.1. The need for label switched paths, as well as their operation and establishment, are introduced in §§1.2.2-1.2.4 below. Finally, “failures” in a label switched path, as well as typical failure responses, are introduced in §1.2.5 below.